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This article analyzes pro-life feminist claims with particular attention to how the pro-life feminist movement attempts to shape college students' attitudes about abortion and understandings of feminism. I explore the messages within pro-life feminist literature and Feminists for Life of America's (FFL) College Outreach Program activist strategies since the mid-1990s, focusing on its campus visits and "Question Abortion" poster campaign launched in 2000-01. Pro-life feminism represents a small social movement, yet offers a focus for critical analysis of how pro-life feminists seek to frame abortion politics and contest the scope of feminism as it influences younger women. FFL's campaign defines their anti-abortion ideology as the truly woman-centered, historically feminist position. Pro-life feminists claim to represent best the interests of younger women and feminism, and demonstrate an anti-abortion strategy framed both as a challenge to and an embracing of the contested field of feminism.
Keywords: abortion rights / reproductive justice / feminisms / pro-life feminism / campus activism / Feminists for Life of America
Since the early 1970s, self-identified pro-life feminists in the United States have argued that a feminist movement in support of abortion rights is not in the best interests of women because abortion condones violence against women and fetuses, causes emotional and physical suffering for women, and contributes to the social devaluation of motherhood (see MacNair, Derr, and Naranjo-Huebl 1995, 2005). My study of pro-life feminist literature and associated college outreach advocacy is motivated by the growing visibility of the lead pro-life feminist organization Feminists for Life of America (FFL), a student's question to me in an introduction to women's studies lecture about whether all feminists "have to be" pro-choice, and reports from women's studies professors about students aligning themselves with pro-life feminism.1
This article analyzes pro-life feminist perspectives with particular attention to how one pro-life feminist organization works to shape U.S. college students' attitudes about abortion and understandings of feminism. FFL started its Campus Outreach Program in the mid-1990s, and has been working nationally to attract college students to the anti-abortion cause by de-emphasizing divisive legal debates and presenting an anti-abortion position as the truly woman-centered, historically feminist position. In her presentation to college audiences, FFL President Serrin Foster notes, "Without known exception, the early feminists condemned abortion in the strongest...